


Iris West's Widows Group

by jessequicksters



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Flirting, Gen or Pre-Slash, Hurt/Comfort, Iris is everyone's heart and soul, Iris' disastrous cooking, Multi, references to past relationships, soft and fleeting touches, the grieving process is better with friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:01:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26987887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessequicksters/pseuds/jessequicksters
Summary: Iris starts a widows group with Caitlin and Harry.
Relationships: Barry Allen & Iris West, Caitlin Snow/Earth-2 Harrison "Harry" Wells, Caitlin Snow/Earth-2 Harrison "Harry" Wells/Iris West, Caitlin Snow/Iris West, Earth-2 Harrison "Harry" Wells/Iris West
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	Iris West's Widows Group

If there’s one thing that no one can ever accuse Iris West of _not_ doing, it’s trying her best. School projects, university clubs, writing projects, family therapy sessions, job interviews, wedding planning—

Iris gives everything her best.

Sometimes, though, it isn’t enough.

She knows you can’t always do it all; have it all; be it all, sure, she gets that. But it’s not fair, the way the universe can take something away from you in the blink of an eye – even when you’ve given so much of your energy, so much of your life, towards someone.

Towards the promise of a future.

So no, you don’t always get what you give, Iris learns.

But she tries again, and this time—she’s going to do it better.

Her idea wasn’t very warmly received at first. (She still gets surprised at these things. Even when she’s a realist at heart, she’s absorbed some of Barry’s optimism over the years – it rattles her, breaks her expectations of the way the world works and she finds herself scrambling to reorient herself to reality.)

Caitlin froze, as she usually does, and pretended to be too busy with some meta-DNA samples to be able to give Iris the chance to explain.

Iris came back the next day and asked again, this time, when Caitlin was on her lunch break by her desk. She brought a cup of Caitlin’s favourite coffee from Jitters and complimented her on the beautiful lace frills on the edges of her sleeves.

“I know what you’re doing, Iris,” Caitlin said, hands fidgeting around the rim of the coffee cup. “I really don’t think I can—it’s just not for me, you know? I’ve already had time to grieve Ronnie – three times, to be precise. I don’t think it would do me any good.”

Iris reached out for her hands, warm with the heat of her mug. “Then, please, do it for me? I need this, Caitlin. You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to. You just have to be there, for me.”

“I wouldn’t want to just sit there without anything to contribute, Iris. I’m not exactly the warmest person, by anyone’s standards.”

Iris lets out a maybe-inappropriate laugh. “You’ve never been anything but warm to me, Cait.”

-

“Are-are you sure you don’t want me to do the cooking? I know how important this is for you and if I can take away some of the stress off your hands,” Barry asks, but Iris waves him off with a half-burnt kitchen towel as he slowly backs away towards the door.

“I’ll be fine, now go,” she says, dumping the ragged towel into the running sink. “My hands are as full as I want them to be.”

Barry makes a face, but doesn’t open his mouth as he’s halfway out the door. Good, Iris thinks. He’s understandably a little nervous about this entire thing – as he usually is with Iris’ schemes.

But this isn’t just a _scheme_ – this is a real opportunity for her to do something for her friends, to make all of their lives better. To really make a difference, not just in the world as Reporter Iris West, but as a person.

Barry’s always been there for her, and while he’s the one who’s usually good at picking people up from their feet, Iris needs to do this on her own.

“Don’t burn down Joe’s house,” Barry says, flatly.

“Don’t be late for your date,” Iris says, enunciating the ‘t’ at the end, as she hears an amused hum as the door shuts.

It clicks open again as she’s running the freshly boiled carrots under the tap in the colander. Can Barry stop hovering over her, for one goddamn moment—

“West,” a voice says at the door. Iris drops the colander as the carrots spill all over the sink.

She looks over to see Harry, halfway through taking off his coat by the door. His eyes widen as he notices the disaster-in-progress, and rushes over to help her, coat still hanging over his arm.

“Oh, no, no, please let me—” she says.

“I’ll pick these up,” he says, reaching for the carrots in the sink. They immediately turn to mush in his hands.

Iris’ mouth falls open. “You ruined my carrots.”

He does a double-take and finally realizes that she’s being dead serious. “I—you think I did this—West, how long did you boil these carrots for?”

“Forty five minutes.”

His glasses nearly fall off his face with how far he leans forward. “Forty—forty-five minutes? Good god, West, you’ve cut these things so small. Baby carrots, you’ve eviscerated them in the water. What did you think they were made of? Calcium?”

He splashes his hands under the running water. She brings some tea towels over to wipe Harry’s arms dry, slowly dragging him by the hands away from the sink.

“I can clean up myself, don’t worry—”

“Just let me, okay?” she looks up at him, trying to calm him down, until he finally nods and lets her pat him dry.

She’s gentle with his wrists; his forearms are dense and strong, but his skin is rather delicate, with red marks where his watch has repeatedly scraped. Iris feels the hairs on the back of his forearm stand up – he instinctively pulls his hands away and rolls his sleeves back down.

She knows it's a big leap for him, to join something like this. Iris actually expected it to be a much harder sell, but after the initial rebuke, Harry readily agreed. And yes, Iris did recycle the whole 'please, do this for me' speech, which earned her a breathless - but not entirely gruff - 'all right' in the end. 

“Thanks.”

Iris nods, deciding that this was enough kitchen action for the night.

She guides him to the living room, where she already had coasters set up for the table.

“Whiskey?” she asks, gesturing at him as he takes a seat in her dad’s favourite sofa. 

“I suppose that would—help, but only if you’re having something, too.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Iris says. “This isn’t a chapter of _Misery_ or anything.”

-

Caitlin arrives just while Harry and Iris are comfortably settling in conversation. They’re talking about metahumans on Earth-2 and what the situation is between them and the press. Apparently, there are multiple publications that specialize on metahuman activities: from Pulitzer Prize-winning news outlets to run-of-the-mill tabloids. Iris writes these things down on the Notes app as Harry’s talking.

Caitlin shuffles next to Iris on the sofa as she sips a cup of Bailey’s cocoa.

“Good to see your sweet tooth extends to your alcoholic drinks, too, Snow,” Harry points out, taking a long sip of his drink.

Caitlin shrugs playfully. She’s generally unfazed by Harry’s brusque tendencies. They’re surprisingly well-behaved around each other whenever Cisco’s not around, which is another reason why Iris is holding out hope for this to work.

“So,” Iris says, turning towards the both of them. “I should say thanks for coming. I know you’re both putting a lot of trust in me, in holding this space for you, and that means a lot to me.”

Both Caitlin and Harry offer gentle smiles, but drop their gaze shortly after, comfortably sitting in the silence.

Well, Iris knew what she was getting into.

“No one really wants to start, right? I get it,” she says. “I guess I’ll just jump right into it, then. I suppose I wanted to do this—for me, first and foremost. I know I was just talking about how this space is for you – and it _is_ – but more than anything, I needed to be around people who understood what I was going through. Now, I don’t know what the best thing is for this kind of thing. I mean, I read forums online and therapy websites. . .”

Harry tilts his head in a slightly sympathetic way. Caitlin takes a breath, too, in a way that signals that she’s done this before.

Iris continues, then, “Yeah, I know, it gets a little much after page twenty three on Google. No web page is ever going to tell you how you’re supposed to feel after you lose someone like that. I think the worst part is that no one ever wants to talk about it, you know? Sometimes I wonder if they’re just too good at not saying the wrong thing, that they never say anything at all.”

She feels her breath hitching, and is caught by surprise when a hand lands on her back. Caitlin looks at her encouragingly, stroking her back as Iris collects herself again.

“It’s just really, really, annoying—the way people act around you,” she says, which earns her several chuckles in agreement. “And they tell you they care, and that they’re there for you, but they’re all too afraid to talk about who this person was to you. They walk up to me and tell me, Eddie was a great guy, real good cop, but they never want to talk about _us_. What we had, you know? I’m left wondering if I’m the only one who remembers that it was real.”

Harry interjects, “I know what that’s like.”

Caitlin and Iris both look at up him, as he continues:

“Tess’ family, after she—passed, they used to tell me all these stories about her, from her undergrad years, from before she met me. I couldn’t stand it. I walked up and got out of the room, one year. And so her mother came out and followed me and she said, Harrison, I’m sorry if this is all too much for you, and I thought to myself—too much? How could this—how could she, ever be too much? No, that wasn’t it. It wasn’t _enough_. I thought it was selfish of me to want to tell them, no—you’re not remembering the best parts of her. You never even knew the heights we reached when we were together.”

Caitlin’s gaze is still as ice on Harry. He swirls his drink in his glass, with three little ice cubes clashing together. Iris notices the way Caitlin uncrosses her legs in her seat, pushing on her toes in her tights as if she’s about to walk over to him.

-

Iris ends up ordering Chinese takeout for them. It’s what’s best for everyone involved.

“You guys deserve this,” she says, topping up their drinks as they plate up their food. “Thank you for putting up with me all night.”

Admittedly, tears were shed at multiple points, as the pile of tissues scattered on the sofa indicated – mostly by Caitlin and Iris. Harry’s managed to keep it together, even though he did end up talking more than Iris anticipated. He mentioned something about _being in the company of adults_ making a difference on conversations like this.

“Don’t be ridiculous, West, as you said—this is not a favour, this is a commitment—” Harry says, passing over another tissue towards her face.

“—to ourselves,” Caitlin finishes, as Harry’s hand brushes against Iris’ cheek.

She takes the tissue and dabs around the stinging corners of her eyes, trying to think of anything else so that she can actually enjoy this meal and not go spiraling back into her own personal hell again.

“All good?” Harry asks, and Iris realizes his gaze never left.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be okay, Harry. Thanks.”

She turns on the television for a much-needed break and the screen turns on to Jerry Maguire.

“I thought George Clooney starred in this film,” Harry squints, seating himself down on the sofa next to Iris, now squeezed in between him and Caitlin.

“Close, but not quite,” Caitlin replies.

Iris smiles as the two of them start channeling Cisco levels of discourse over 90’s Hollywood heartthrobs and _rom-coms_.

-

Caitlin leaves in a cab, with her scarf wrapped around tight around her neck as the cold air hits her face and her face flushes pink. Iris gives her a hug before she steps into the car.

“Thank you, again, for being brave for the rest of us. I promise I’ll try to share more next time,” she says. “I have a few stories about Ronnie and I that I think you’ll like.”

“I’d like that.”

Iris turns around and bumps into Harry, who instinctively reaches out for her shoulders just as she’s about to slip and fall.

“I’m so sorry—I’m usually not this clumsy, I promise,” Iris says, straightening herself up.

“Allen’s given it to you,” Harry says.

“He—what?”

Harry goes on to explain, “He’s clumsy, you’re usually not, but like I said, because of all the time you spend together he’s—you know what, never mind.”

Iris laughs, watching as Harry bites his lip and shakes his head at himself.

“I’ve lived around Barry my entire life and I have picked up on a lot of his habits, but there’s a lot about me that not even _he_ can change,” she says.

Harry looks up, hands on his hips. “Really?”

Iris nods along. “Uh-uh. Maybe you should get to know me more, instead of making assumptions about me based on the gossip in STAR Labs.”

“I don’t listen to—”

“—Harry.”

“Okay, maybe Ramon likes to gossip – in my presence – but I always assumed that you and Allen were, you know.”

She shouldn’t be surprised, really, because _everyone_ says this about her and Barry. Even Eobard Thawne, who was the damn reason for this entire widow’s group in the first place. She’s really not a fan, of destiny and all that – and her days of schoolgirl crushes and fairytale romances are over.

Like she’s said multiple times. She’s a realist at heart. Barry’s a romantic. There’s a whole wide world of love out there, enough for the both of them.

“I get that a lot,” Iris finally says, as she notices a sparkle in Harry’s eyes for the first time tonight. Strange, she thinks. Must be the light of the moon.

She walks him to his car on the road and waves at him as he’s turning on the engines. He opens his window, just as she’s walking back to the house and pokes his head out to say something – but Iris gets distracted by a text she receives on her phone.

She reads it, briefly, and by the time she looks back up Harry’s already rolling up the window and driving off.

She gets another text, this time with an attachment:

**_[10938.png]_ **

**_Caitlin Snow:_ ** _This was the engagement ring that Ronnie bought for me the first time around._

She scrolls up to re-read the first text:

 **_Caitlin Snow:_ ** _I’ll show you mine, you show me yours?_

Iris smiles and curls up on the sofa, preparing to type back a reply as she gets a text by Harry.

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoyed this, there might be a sequel? it's a super niche ship, but when I started thinking about all the things they had in common my heart just got soft


End file.
